Ah, yes, my [Terrorist Mastermind Daily Brief]! I don’t even know why I bother reading them anymore. They always say the same thing: ‘Trail is cold. Trail is cold. Trail is cold.’ Look, it’s been ten years…I got away with it. I tell you, this is going to be the last TMDB I ever read. I simply do not need them anymore.

I’m happy to extend plenty of credit to all kinds of officials throughout the government, but crediting Bush’s “vigilance” on bin Laden is deeply silly.

Let’s be fair: some things are fundamentally difficult.

I didn’t consider it a black mark against the Bush Administration that they didn’t “connect the dots” before the 9/11 attacks. I didn’t consider it a black mark against the Bush Administration that bin Laden escaped from Tora Bora — even if a case could be made that Defense Department errors made that possible.

Hindsight is easy. Getting the answers right when you can’t even be certain what the questions are — that’s hard.

Bremer, who arrived with sweeping plans to remake the country, had a young and inexperienced team, but his staff had passed a political litmus test in Washington. “It’s a children’s crusade … of former Republican campaign workers, White House interns [and] Heritage Foundation people,” says Thomas Ricks of The Washington Post.

Col. T.X. Hammes, a counterinsurgency expert and adviser to Iraq’s Interior Ministry, felt Bremer’s staff could have been better trained. “We had so many of these very, very young people that are dedicated Americans, brave enough to take a chance and go into Iraq to try to do something right for their country,” he tells FRONTLINE. “But [they] didn’t get any training; they have no background. … And yet we put them in charge of planning at [the] national level.”

It seems to me that the Bush Administration didn’t value competence, didn’t respect hard work, and didn’t have patience.